1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an agent (or a software module with a knowledge or rule base and a capability of operating to meet a user's request on the basis of a decision which has been made by itself on how to meet the request) and, more particularly, to an agent-user interface.
2. Description of the Prior Art
User interfaces with agents and applications are generally classified into physical extrovert interfaces such as GUIs (or graphical user interfaces) and logical internal interfaces such as APIs (or application programming interfaces).
There are some examples for internal interfaces each capable of adapting the agent operation to the user by using the agent internal status, reference data used by the agent, etc.
For example, Japanese patent unexamined publication No. Hei6-68063 (1994) discloses a virtual life system which simulates a living thing by using knowledge stored in a knowledge base and internal and extrovert condition information of and environment information stored in a condition information storage means. However, this system does not have a capability of changing the operation thereof by using parameters associated with characteristics of the system itself or characteristics of the user.
Japanese patent unexamined publication No. Hei7-6142 (1995) discloses a multiagent cooperation system in which objective data of each user and data dependent on preference of the user are stored in a user defined data storage for the user, and either passed to an agent group associated with the user in response to a request from the agent group or used for a conversion of a request from the user which is to be passed to an agent of the agent group in response to a request from the agent. However, the data stored in the user defined data storage only include data associated with neither characteristics of the system itself nor characteristics of the user, which prevents agents from having characteristics and operation of the agents from being adapted to characteristics of the agents or characteristics of the user.